Very heavy rain has fallen during the day on August 12th in and around Baltimore (with rainfall rates as high as 2.70″ per hour at KBWI) and Washington DC, with reports of up to 10″. Where has this moisture come from? There are a variety of products available to diagnose total precipitable water in the atmosphere. The animation above, taken from the MIMIC Total Precipitable Water page (link), shows an influx of tropical moisture from the south-southeast has surged northward up to the east coast of Maryland on August 12. A mesoanalysis from SPC also suggests a link to the moisture east and south of Cape Hatteras. The GOES Sounder Total Precipitable Water derived product image at 1800 UTC, below, (from this website) showed very high total precipitable water amounts just south of Baltimore and Washington DC with values exceeding 60 mm or 2.4″. Soundings at 1200 UTC also showed high values of precipitable water: 48.5 mm or 1.90″ at Wallops Island, VA, and 44.7 mm or 1.76″ at Washington Dulles. Finally, the Blended Total Precipitable Water Product from NESDIS showed values around 51 mm or 2″ as well. (Values did not quite reach the 200% of normal threshold, however).

The animation of GOES-13 Infrared (10.7 µm) imagery, below, suggests some training was occurring in the thunderstorm development: thunderstorms continually redeveloped and moved over the same region. Training thunderstorms in moisture-rich air is a recipe for flooding.

Comparisons of Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.64 µm visible channel and 11.45 µm IR channel images at 17:16 UTC and 18:54 UTC (below) showed that the convection exhibited cold cloud-top IR brightness temperatures (as cold as -77º C), and subtle shadowing on the visible imagery suggestive of overshooting tops. Using GOES-13 IR imagery,  the CIMSS/NASA Langley Automated Overshooting Tops / Thermal Couplets product displayed one distinct overshooting top (blue square symbol) over the Baltimore area at 18:45 UTC.

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GOES-15 6.5 µm water vapor channel images (above; click image to play animation; also available as an MP4 movie file) showed the development of a train of stratospheric intrusion vortices over the East Pacific Ocean during the 07 August – 08 August 2014 period. These vortices formed along a middle to upper tropospheric wind shear axis, and propagated toward the northeast.

The corresponding GOES sounder Total Column Ozone product (below; click image to play animation) revealed ozone values as high as 375 Dobson Units (lighter green color enhancement) within the more well-defined stratospheric intrusion vortices, due to the fact that ozone-rich stratospheric air was descending as the tropopause heights were lowered within the cyclonic vortex circulations.

Other examples of stratospheric intrusion vortices can be found here, here, here, and here.

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GOES-14 (positioned over the Equator at 105º West Longitude) Imager and Sounder instruments have been activated to support of SRSO-R operations, which are scheduled to begin Thursday 14 August. The first image acquired was shortly after 1530 UTC on 5 August; Image Navigation and Registration start-up was scheduled for 7-9 August, and the image above along the Gulf Coast shows that the navigation today is very accurate. Infrared imagery for the same time shows coldest cloud tops (over eastern Arkansas) near -65º C.

After a north-south maneuver on the 12th, GOES-14 1-minute imagery will begin to flow. The satellite is scheduled to return to standby mode on 29 August.

Satellite messages from NOAA, including those pertaining to GOES-14, can be viewed here.

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Suomi NPP VIIRS 0.64 µm visible channel and 11.45 µm IR channel images at 23:47 UTC on 07 August 2014 (above) showed Category 1 Hurricane Iselle just east of Hawai’i, exhibiting a convective burst within the northern semicircle and cloud-top IR brightness temperatures as cold as -82º C. With the approach of Iselle, the Central Pacific Hurricane Center issued its first Hurricane Warning for a portion of Hawai’i since 1993.

An animation of GOES-15 0.63 µm visible channel images during daylight and 10.7 µm IR images at night (below; click to play animation; also available as an MP4 movie file) revealed a deteriorating satellite signature as the hurricane approached the Big Island of Hawai’i — and Iselle was downgraded to a Tropical Storm around 08 UTC on 08 August. However, abundant moisture and orographic effects led to some locations receiving over 10 inches of rainfall in a 24-hour period. In fact, one final convective burst could be seen developing after about 11:00 UTC, moving over the southeastern portion of the Big Island after about 12:45 UTC.

The period of deteriorating satellite signature and weakening intensification were due to the storm encountering increasing deep layer wind shear (below).

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